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Tuesday, May 14, 2013

Police Shut Down BART Entrance; Pour Into Mission during Block Party against Gentrification

Kids space at the plaza.

On Tuesday, April 30th,
police were stationed across Valencia, in cars, on foot, walking the beat. No,
they weren’t involved in a massive Sit/Lie sting, they weren’t out looking to
find the next Kenneth Harding evading a fare on Muni, they were trying to,
“Prevent another May Day riot,” as they told a friend of mine who they questioned
about their presence. Another person that was interviewed stated that they were
questioned by police, “Why were they wearing black?” Last year, marching from Dolores Park, anarchists wearing black with masks to cover their faces from
police and video cameras, attacked affluent shops and police along Valencia
Street, seen to many as the epicenter of the hipster invasion of the Mission
and an extreme symbol of gentrification of what used to be a largely lesbian
enclave in a working-class Latino neighborhood.

Eddie Falcon

Several weeks after the
riot, I sat down with a friend that had grown up in the Mission and asked him
what he thought of the riot, which quickly was understood as an attack on
gentrification based solely on targets alone. “I thought it was fucking great,”
he remarked. “Fuck the caviar Left and their denunciations, everyone I know
understood it exactly what it was, a riot against gentrification in the area.”
Flash forward to present day, several weeks ago I stood in a donut shop on
Mission Street, staring at a poster for an upcoming block party against
gentrification. An older white man noticed me looking at it and I asked him his
thoughts were. “Have you been to Valencia lately?,” he asked me. “It’s fucking
disgusting. Those people just sit there on their phones. They’re destroying the
Latino culture here.” It’s clear that the police agreed, and they chose very
clearly what side they are taking. In the aftermath of the riot, affluent
business owners were furious that the police, who have a substation on
Valencia, seemed to be powerless during the assault on their property. Several
months later, anarchists again rampaged in the neighborhood, attacking the
police station, businesses, and banks after SFPD shot a young man close to 16th
and Mission. Judging from the police presence that was stationed on the street
on Cinco de Mayo, May 5th, police weren’t pulling any punches this
time, or should I say, letting anyone else throw them.

BART Station was shut down.

Walking up to 16th
and Mission on May 5th, I was not prepared for the amount of police. I’ve been
going to protests and demonstrations in the San Francisco bay area for over ten
years. I remember the marches after 9/11 decrying the invasion of Afghanistan that
now continues via Obama’s drone strikes and somewhat secret “kill-lists.” The
mass marches against the Iraq war (round 2), which continued Clinton’s string
of extended air strikes and sanctions which left hundreds of thousands dead and
shut the city down when the war started. I handed out flyers to bus drivers and
riders against MUNI fare hikes; I took the streets against the police killings
of Kenneth Harding and when BART tried to shut down limited cell phone and internet service after people
raged following the police murder of a homeless man. I’ve seen the police in
this city do a lot of shit, but for a block party?

View from the plaza.

In the run up to the
block party, internet blogs such as ‘Uptown Almanac,’ played up the fact that
there would be ‘Google Bus Piñatas,’ instead of the fact that this would be the
first public demonstration in the Mission District specifically against gentrification
in several years. One person even emailed the group asking, “Where can I buy a
‘Google bus piñata’ for my own party?” Reading the reports on Uptown Almanac
and others that did cover the block party seemed to focus solely on this
aspect: the Google bus piñatas, so much so that they miss the whole story of
the event, the police repression that it brought, and what made it interesting.
According to the Almanac blog, only 30-40 people attended, which is way off the
mark. By around 1:30pm, about 50 people had gathered in the plaza, and
throughout the 3 hours that the block party went on, up until about 4:30PM or
so, over 150 people had passed through the space and enjoyed the food,
speakers, and music. It seemed that what media was there, was mostly only interested
in a photo op of the Google bus smashing. At the plaza, people had placed banners up throughout the square, in both Spanish and English. Banners read, "No Condos in the Mission," "Stop Evictions and Displacement," "Ellis Act is Racist," and "Save the 17 Reasons Building." Various groups had tables, including anarchist distros, the newspaper FireWorks, SF Needle Exchange, Homes Not Jails, and the Housing Rights Committee.

SFPD

At around 1PM, the same time that the block
party was to start, police were built up around the 17 Reasons building, which was
recently bought by a new landlord who is currently trying to evict some of the
tenants. The landlord, Rick Holman, was close by, chumming it up with the cops,
and also stationed private security which checked id’s at the building and
placed surveillance cameras around it. One of the spaces there, In the Works
(ITW), which is a ‘Community and (Anti) Art Space,’ was served with an unlawful
detainer. During the block party, large amounts of police were stationed all around
the building, perhaps in their minds, to prevent an occupation of the building.
Clearly, there was a level of coordination between the landlord and the police
in trying to keep the block party from happening and also trying to attack ITW
at the same time. Police kept a strong presence around the building throughout
the day, as well as across Valencia Street. Police were trying to attack the
block party and hinder people from participating in it.

Tommie Mecca

The block party itself
drew in a lot of people, both from the street, who were already in the plaza,
and who had come just for the party itself. Dee Allen, a long-term anarchist
and poet who has published several works of poetry was the MC for the event.
Several people performed and also spoke. Among the first people to perform was
Tommi Mecca, of the Housing Rights Committee. Tommi unfortunately played
several acoustic songs about gentrification. I say unfortunately, because his
song with the chorus that goes, “Yuppie, yuppie, yuppie, stole my pad, yuppie,
yuppie, yuppie, bad, bad, bad!,” is still in my head. Tommi’s recent editorial
that ran in The Guardian, sums up the
spirit of much of the entire event.

“Where is the building-by-building organizing of
renters? Where is the street outreach in every neighborhood? Where are the
blocked doorways of those being forced out of their apartments by pure
greed? Where are the direct actions against the speculators and investors who
are turning our neighborhoods into a monopoly game? Where is the pressure on
the Board of Supervisors to pass legislation to curb speculation and
gentrification rather than approve tax breaks for dot-com companies? Where is
the pressure on state legislators to repeal the Ellis Act and other state laws
that prohibit our city from strengthening rent control and eviction
protections? Every moment we wait, more people are displaced from
their homes, more neighborhoods become upscale, more small businesses are lost….It's
time to take back what's left of our city.”

"Since
the 1990’s, we have seen thousands of people displaced, evicted, pushed out,
and gentrified from the Mission and in the greater San Francisco era. Using
tools such as the Ellis Act, landlords have been able to remove whole families
from buildings and then covert them into condos – making millions. In recent
years, these evictions have only gone up, not down, with the Mission one of the
hardest hit neighborhoods. Local businesses have closed due to high rents,
while others have been forced to declare bankruptcy and shut their doors. AIDS
patients, those on a fixed income, senior citizens, and the working poor are
especially hard hit, and many have become homeless.”

POOR Magazine

Also speaking at the event were representatives from
POOR Magazine, Esperanaza Gardens, a community garden which is facing
destruction from developers who want to turn the area into condos, as well as
Homes Not Jails, who weekly meets to find housing for homeless people through
the illegal act of squatting vacant buildings. Having gone to several of their
meeting, I know that every week they go out, seeking to place in vacant homes
homeless people who are interested in starting and keeping squatted spaces. I
especially enjoyed the talk given by Kevie, a San Francisco native, who talked
about the history of gentrification in the city, as well as background info on
the developers who recently bought the 17 Reasons building. Performing at the
event where two anarchist hip-hop acts, MC Lovelle and Eddie Falcon of the 40
Thievez. I’ve seen Eddie perform at 16th and Mission several times,
the last time being outside of the part of the anarchist bookfair several
months ago and Lovell at a graffiti festival in Modesto last year. Both of the
artist’s game has improved a lot, and the crowd definitely loved both. I talked
with Falcon after the performance, and asked him what the local 16th
and Missioners thought. “I got a lot of support. A lot of people asked for
cd’s,” he responded. Many of Falcon’s songs reference the Mission area. Eddie
is a long term member of Iraq Veterans Against the War and became an anarchist
after returning to the US following tours of duty in the army in Iraq and
Afghanistan.

MC Lovelle

Food
not Bombs also was on hand, doing a fine job of feeding the gathering with
homemade tacos and donated pizzas from the worker-cooperative Arizmendi, which
is part of the NoBAWC group, which includes worker owned businesses ranging
from ‘Mendi which slings pizzas, to the union strip club, ‘The Lusty Lady,’
made famous from the documentary, ‘Live Nude Girls, Unite!’ Food not Bombs,
which has a rich history in San Francisco, and also helped spawn Homes Not Jails
in the early 1990’s, serves free food in the 16th and Mission plaza
several days a week.

By
around 4:30pm however, the police had had enough. Just as the last Google bus piñata
was being dramatically smacked down by a large wooden stick and Dee Allen was
delivering a fiery set of poetry, the gas on the generator run out. Police then
stepped in and stood in front of the generator – and also confiscated the gas
can. When asked why they had also decided to shut down part of the BART
station, they replied, “Someone threw a bottle at us.” It was clear that the police
were done with the event and were ready for it to come to an end. As event
organizers tried to squirrel away sound system before the police could take it
away as “evidence,” around 20 police officers spilled into the plaza, in
effect, shutting the event down. What was saddest of all was that talking with
people that were there at the event, the open mic portion was about to start
and many people who came to share their thoughts did not get to do so. I wish
that more people had come to the event, and that even more would have stayed.
It’s clear that the high numbers at the start of the block party kept police at
bay for the first several hours of the event. Unfortunate as it is that the
open mic did not happen due to police harassment, still a clear message was
articulated to the Mission neighborhood on May 5th: condos are
coming in, gentrification hasn’t stopped – it’s gotten worse. Ellis Act
evictions aren’t a thing of the dot-com past, they have continued and this
year, reached their highest yet. Clearly the police presence in the
neighborhood and also around the 17 Reasons building is a clear reminder that
the state understands and supports the side of wealth and power. They are
organized and have made their plans. Those that stand with poor and working
people have got to start making theirs.

Food Not Bombs serving food.

It’s important to keep in mind that displacement and removal of people – and
resistance to that displacement and removal in the Mission District is nothing
new. Ohlone people fought and died in what is now the Mission District to stop
colonization and being forced onto Missions. Radical labor organizers and
militants have called the mission home for decades, using the neighborhood as a
staging ground for action and resistance, including the San Francisco general
strike. Since the 1950’s, people have clashed with everyone from BART to
yuppies to stop the flood of upper-class residents and developers in the
neighborhood. Using and collection of tactics from marches, to arson, to
postering, people have fought the removal of thousands of poor and working
people from their homes in the Mission District and struggled against Ellis Act
evictions and landlord greed. What happened on Cinco de Mayo isn’t anything
new, but it is part of a history of resistance against something that poor and
working people have been fighting against for a decades.